ATTENTION TAEGAN GODDARD...A "hot tub confession" such as the one you say was made yesterday by Utah House Majority Leader Kevin Garn is a confession made while in a hot tub rather than a confession about being in a hot tub.

To say that least, that would have been an interesting visual that would have been tailor-made for TMZ.

• Rep. Paul Ryan (WI)
• Rep. Dave Camp (MI)
• Rep. Jeb Hensarling (TX)
• Sen. Judd Gregg (NH)
• Sen. Michael Crapo (ID)
• Sen. Tom Coburn

With the possible exception of Coburn, this list was predictable.  It includes the senior GOP members of the House and Senate Budget Committees and the House Ways and Means Committee.  Crapo is six down from the top of the Senate Finance Committee and Senate Republican leader Mith McConnell (KY) had to skip over two comparative moderates -- ranking member Chuck Grassley (IA) and Olympia Snowe (ME) -- to get to him, but he's also on budget.   Coburn is not a member of budget, finance, or appropriations, but he is a gadfly (read: pain in the ass) when it comes to spending and can be expected to talk about earmarks and pork at every possible opportunity.

This will put a smile on your face.  Didn't you ask at least one of these questions yourself last week?

Next Monday, Senate Banking Chair Chris Dodd (D-CT) will introduce his financial reform bill without Republican support, despite pledges of Senators Richard Shelby (R-AL) and Bob Corker (R-TN) to work with him. Our recent worst financial crisis since the Depression cries out for major changes, but our broken government may fail to enact them. Absent public outcry, heavily financed industry lobbying will gun down financial reform in the Senate this spring. 

 It's obviously true that earmarks are not a significant cause of rising federal spending; eliminating all of them will save at most one percent of the budget. I've always suspected that this is the main reason why right wingers focus on them so obsessively--it makes them look tough on spending while actually doing nothing meaningful to cut it.

That said, I think earmarks are underrated in terms of their contribution to corruption. It's really poisonous when members of Congress can so easily direct federal spending to a favored business in order to attract campaign contributions or just the mistaken belief that they are doing something for their district by helping out a local company.

Furthermore, I think the idea that if Congress stops earmarking that they will somehow disappear is ludicrous. It will just increase congressional pressure on the administration to include favored projects in the president's budget, which for some reason is always treated as being earmark-free.

My column from yesterday's The Fiscal Times noted that state and local governments around the country, which because of balanced budget requirements and dramatically falling revenues are facing some very tough times, are being forced to make difficult decisions.

But this story in yesterday's The New York Times about Kansas City deciding to close half its public schools and reduce the payroll by around 20 percent makes the decisions by other states to close rest stops along some highways appear to be insignificant.

The Times' story indicates that the schools and school board in Kansas City have been in terrible shape for years and, therefore, that this decision was almost inevitable.  Still, the precipitating event was was the projected $50 million deficit (out of a total budget of $300 million) in the midst of the economic downturn and the prospect that it wasn't going to get any better any time soon.

I agree with Andrew: This sudden race in the House to see whose holier-than-thou on earmarks is a good thing.  But there are three reasons why no one should get too excited about the recent developments:

1.  As Andrew notes and I've remarked on previously, eliminating earmarks doesn't actually reduce spending; all it does is change who makes the decision from Congress to an executive branch agency.  Unless the appropriation is reduced at the same time the earmark is eliminated, which no one is suggesting, the amount that will be spent will remain the same.

 The Wall Street Journal is reporting that San Francisco Fed President Janet Yellen will be nominated to be Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve Board. Since she is already a member of the FOMC, however, this doesn't really change the direction of monetary policy. The Journal says that persons have been selected for the other two Fed vacancies. It is likely that all three names will be sent to the Senate simultaneously.

Addendum

Former Fed Governor Larry Meyer has a good comment here.

Friday's Wall Street Journal has the latest survey of 54 professional economic forecasters. Among the questions they were asked was this: "What would the real gross domestic product (annualized growth rate) be/have been for the following period absent the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act?"

The average response said that growth would have been -0.93 percent last year in the absence of fiscal stimulus. Since growth was essentially zero on a 4th quarter over 4th quarter basis--the measure favored by forecasters--this suggests that the stimulus added almost a full percentage point to real GDP growth in 2009.

For 2010, the forecasters say that growth would be 2.2 percent in the absence of stimulus. Since the average growth forecast for this year is 3.0 percent by these same forecasters, this suggests that the stimulus bill will add 0.8 percent to growth this year as well. In other words, the real GDP growth rate this year will be more than a third higher than it would be in the absence of stimulus.